


Cataloging

by theheadandthekin



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fantasizing, Introspection, Mention of sex, One Shot, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-05-01 02:07:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5188100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theheadandthekin/pseuds/theheadandthekin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crane pines for Abbie -- and makes a list.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cataloging

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Tumblr.

He may have Googled the “Outer Banks” when he got back from the date with Zoe. He had to satisfy his gnawing curiosity, and so he stared at the images on his phone, images of wide beaches, pale sunrises over the ocean, teal water, weathered houses clinging to the edge of the world on high stilts.

Although he had never been, never ventured as far south as North Carolina, it was easy to fill in the gaps: the sounds of the surf, the humidity, the smell of the ocean and wet sand.

It was easy to imagine her there. Easy to imagine the heavy salt air clinging to her glistening skin, bared and free, grains of sand marking her path to a creaking bed under a whirring fan, her hair protected in braids.

All their clothes still packed away. The sheets balled up on a chair because it was simply too hot. The afternoon shadows stretching toward the porch, toward the beach. The thirst that no water could quench.

It was easy to erase Agent Reynolds from the picture.

_Beach house._

He filed it away and vowed someday, if she were ever to let him, to see such a scene realized and _lived_. Not _there_ , of course, on the Outer Banks, that was _theirs_ and not a memory for him to intrude upon, but maybe perhaps on the Cape, along the Connecticut shoreline, Maine. Early September, when the weather was still hot, but the crowds faded.

He cataloged it alongside the others.

There were the domestic ones: the sweet (soft kisses on her porch); the raunchy (the washing machine); the dear (his first invitation into her bedroom); the utterly forbidden (her quiet announcement she was with child, and their subsequent celebration).

There were the ones inextricably bound up with their duties: the things-he-wished-he’d-done, too numerous to name; the escalation (fucking her right there when she outsmarted him); the relief (more celebration); the companionable (in front of the fireplace in the Archives); the bloodlust (her too riled up to make it out of the car).

And there were others. The far-flung (taking her to England and Oxford and to his family’s home in Scotland) and the truly fantastical (a wedding night).

He didn’t dare wish for them. But he kept them. He kept them for when he was sure he could stand with her, as an equal, not as someone she needed to prop up. He kept them in case her pushing meant something more than it seemed to on the surface. He kept them because he loved her more than the world, and he doubted she would accept that. But he hoped, with patience and space and care, she would. Desperately.


End file.
